I recently quit my full-time job, and during this transition, many friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and family members have suggested that I start my own medical practice.  Their intentions are pure.  People close to me know how much I love both medicine and business.  

It’s common to assume medical professionals would want to start a medical business.  Perhaps people have suggested it to you.  After all, if you’re reading this site, you must be at least peripherally interested in business.  It should be a perfect fit, right?  

Well, I have zero interest in starting a medical business, and you may want to reconsider it also.  Here’s why I’m glad to have a non-medical business instead.

I don’t want to be the business. 

I love business, so of course I’ve thought through what it would look like to start my own medical practice.  But the reality is this: if I start a family practice, I am the business, and for at least the first two years, I’d have to be fully invested every single day.

If I were to start a telemedicine company, I’d be the product, at least initially.  In both cases, it’s expensive to start, expensive to get out of, and nearly impossible to step back during the early years.  Even an urgent care would tie me down at the front end.  To grow it, I’d need to be there, working, managing, and building, all while investing a significant amount of money that I don’t have.

That’s not what I want right now.  My kids are little, and this time with them is too important.  I’m not willing to trade years with them for another business that relies on my presence every day.

That’s why I love my laundromat.  Anyone can do the day-to-day tasks.  My husband, my parents, and the hired staff can all pitch in.  I can involve the kids, and we make it a family project instead of something that pulls me away from them.  It’s flexible, and it doesn’t trap me into being the only one who can keep it going.

The business of medicine can steal the joy of medicine.

I’ve never owned a medical business, but I’ve seen a lot of what goes on behind the scenes.  In my role in urgent care management, I got a taste of how the business side works, and honestly, it made me see the bad parts of medicine.  Managing people, jumping through insurance hoops, and constantly fighting to align revenue with patient care was exhausting.

And it scared me a little.  Because my favorite part of medicine has always been the patients.  I still love taking care of them.  What I don’t love is trying to run the game of business on top of that.

I’ve also realized something about myself: I’m too passionate and too vocal to play that game well.  In order to have a profitable medical business, you often have to nod along, follow the rules set by someone else, and make peace with compromises that don’t always feel right for the patients or the staff.   That’s not me.  I don’t play well in that space.  If it came down to it, I’d probably burn the whole thing down before I succeeded.

I get different things from my business and my job. 

There’s a certain satisfaction and identity wrapped up in being good at my job, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.  I know I’m good at what I do, and I enjoy that.  But when medicine is both your job and your business, it never turns off.

Even though I didn’t own the urgent care, just being in management made it feel like I could never leave it behind.  I’d go home, but it was still on my mind.  I can only imagine how much worse that would be if it were my practice.

It reminds me of playing college basketball.  I loved the game, but at that level, it stopped being an escape.  Practices were four hours long, and every move was critiqued; the fun part disappeared.  I used to crave playing pickup ball back home in Lincoln Park, where it was pure and simple again.

That’s how I see medicine and business.  Going to the laundromat is an escape from medicine.  And going to see patients can be an escape from business and personal stress.  I like that they’re separate.  Keeping those worlds apart makes me better at both.

I want to diversify my skills and income. 

One of the best parts of owning a laundromat is how much I’ve learned in such a short time.  I’ve fixed control boards, replaced dryer belts and thermostats, installed a change machine, and even figured out vending.  I’ve learned a great deal about the brick-and-mortar business.  I’ve started building credit, opened net-30 accounts, and talked to business acquisition lenders.  These aren’t skills I ever expected to have, but they’ve given me confidence I didn’t have before.

Medicine will always be my primary skillset, and it’s the one that pays my bills.  I’m grateful for that.  But having all my income tied to healthcare feels risky.  I wanted another stream of income that I could rely on if needed, and I wanted something that was mine, not dependent on my license or hours.

The laundromat gives me both.  It adds financial security, but just as importantly, it expands who I am and what I can do outside of medicine.

I like simple cash flow vs. complex healthcare reimbursement.

I’ve always thrived in fire-hydrant learning environments, the kind where you’re going 100 MPH.  Buying a laundromat was precisely that.  I had no experience, no background, and lived two hours away, so I just had to figure it out.  However, what I love about it is its simplicity.  Quarters come in, bills go to the bank.

People come to do their laundry like clockwork.  They kept coming when half the machines were broken, when the building wasn’t clean, and when there was no marketing.  All we had to do was care and be better than “really, really bad,” which wasn’t hard.

In medicine, learning the ropes is so much harder.  You have to contract with insurance companies, learn billing and coding, worry about audits, chase payments, manage staff, and hold the weight of patient care on top of it all.  It’s complicated and heavy.  With the laundromat, there’s a benefit in the simplicity, and right now, that’s exactly what I need.

I like the flexibility and scalability in non-medical businesses. 

In a medical business centered around me, growth is limited by the number of patients I can personally see.  Sure, I could hire another provider, but that would be a $100,000+ decision.  It’s not something you can scale endlessly, and every new location comes with its own risks, including different markets, payer mixes, and high upfront costs.

With my laundromat, it’s different.  It runs all day, every day, without me being there.  Growth is flexible.  We can add employees and expand into pickup/delivery or wash-dry-fold services.  We can replicate this model in other cities, especially now that we’ve automated so much of it.  And if we ever wanted to sell, it would be far easier for someone else to step in and run it than if it were my medical practice.

I like keeping my identities separate. 

I identify myself as many different things: I am a Christian, a mother, a wife, a friend, a sister, a PA, and a business owner.  Each of those roles matters to me, but I don’t want them all blended together.

My identity as a medical professional stays pure.  I still love patient care, and I want to protect that passion from being clouded by the stress of running a medical business.  On the other hand, being a business owner brings me joy in a completely different way: learning new skills, growing something meaningful, and building toward my family’s financial independence.

Keeping those identities separate also lowers the chance of burnout.  If one world gets heavy, I still have the other as an escape.  That balance makes me better at both.

For me, combining them would feel suffocating.  Owning a medical business would be like marrying another PA or doctor.  I think I would always feel like I was in competition, constantly critiquing, always convinced I could do it better.  That’s how I know keeping medicine and business apart is what works best for me; it lets me thrive in both.

Conclusion

The next time you think about starting a business, I hope this encourages you to look beyond the obvious and consider something outside of the medical field.  Owning a non-medical business doesn’t diminish your professional status.  It can protect what you love about medicine while giving you a new outlet for entrepreneurship.

For me, that means I get to keep patient care pure, while also exploring the challenge and joy of running a business that isn’t tied to my license or my hours.  It lowers my risk, gives me flexibility, and actually makes me enjoy both medicine and business more.

If you’re curious about what this could look like for you, I’d love to share more.  Between Dr. Slater and me, you’ll get two very different perspectives: one from the medical business side and one from the non-medical side.  Either way, I hope that you’ll see there’s more than one path to building wealth and finding balance.